


Counting the Ways

by notadamsel37



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Married Life, No Plot/Plotless, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 13:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20967572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notadamsel37/pseuds/notadamsel37
Summary: To where you are.Ed has learned. It's taken him a bit, but he's learned.





	Counting the Ways

**Author's Note:**

> what is this even about? no clue. i just wanted them to be happy and fluffy.  
also i listened to 100 years by five for fighting continuously while writing this.
> 
> can exist in the same universe as my other fics

Edward had no qualms in calling himself a good father.

And yeah, he didn’t have the best dad growing up, but after meeting Hohenheim, and fighting alongside him, and recognizing all that he had given up to save the country, Ed had pretty much forgiven him. After all, without Hohenheim, they would all be dead now, and he would never know what it means to be a father. So he may not have had the best example, but Hohenheim was far from the worst dad Ed had met either.

But it was days like these that he felt most comfortable with his favorite title. He was chasing the kids around, in some version of hide and seek, or maybe tag. They laughed as he grabbed for them, and lunged away from his hands, taunting him all the while. He stumbled around the room in an exaggerated limp, pretending to be whatever monster the kids had come up with now. 

He swooped down to wrangle an unsuspecting child when he heard the kitchen timer going off. All at once, the playful giggling turned into shrieks of delight when Lucas, Lily, and Emma realized that dinner was ready. Ed stood up straight, stretching out his back. The spare prosthetic on his leg was just short enough that it could screw up his back for days, even after he got his automail leg back. 

He walked into the kitchen, half expecting the kids to be building a shrine to dinner and dancing around it from the sounds they were making. But no, they were just crowded around the oven, ready to eat. 

“Alright, all of you, back away from the oven.” He shooed them with a dishtowel, but they were too focused on food to pay him any attention. While good for his pride in cooking, this was not the best time. “I’m serious, out of the kitchen. Now. I don’t want anyone getting hurt, because then we wouldn’t get to eat dinner on time.”

Ah, yes, that particular threat worked like a charm. 

Dishtowel in hand, he carefully pulled the cottage pie out of the oven and set it on a wooden rack to cool on the counter for a bit. He glanced up at the ceiling, but couldn’t hear anything indicating that his wife had gotten her butt out of the chair she had been in all day. He sighed, and rolled his eyes. He knew she was a gearhead when they were kids, and when they were teenagers, and when they were adults, and yet he still married her. 

The pie had to cool anyway, and the kids had gone back to playing another chasing game, so he made his way down the stairs at the back of the house to drag Winry up to eat if he needed to. 

He walked to the end of the hall to her workshop. Once he got there, he leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, wondering how long he could stand there before she noticed him. He watched her work on the wiring in his leg for a few minutes, almost forgetting that he was supposed to be grabbing her for dinner. He decided he could indulge for a few more minutes, though, watching his wife work. He never really got tired of it. 

A small grin appeared on his face. No matter how long they were married or how many kids the two of them had, he never took for granted that this woman was his wife. That she had chosen him, out of all the people in the world, to spend the rest of her life with. He could never quite get over how lucky he was to have her in his life. He looked down at the ring on his left hand, rubbing it with his thumb. He really was the luckiest guy in the world to be Winry’s husband. 

“Winry.” No response. “Hey, Winry.” Still nothing. He walked into the workshop, careful to avoid any automail parts that were on the floor. He stood behind her, and gently placed his hand on her shoulder, trying not to startle her. “Winry. Dinner.”

She shrugged off his hand and grabbed a pair of pliers from the table next to her workbench. “Not yet. Almost done.”

“Winry, seriously. It’s time for dinner, and you need to eat.”

“Ed, seriously. I’m almost done.” She continued to work on the wiring in the ankle, not showing any sign of giving into him.

He put his hand back on her shoulder and shook it a bit. “Yeah, right. If I know you at all, that just means that you want to stay down here for another nine hours straight so you’ll finish by tomorrow morning. If you’re still working on the wiring, you aren’t almost done.”

She slapped his hand off again, and turned to glare at him through the reading glasses she was wearing. “Oh? And how would you know that, alchemy freak?”

“Years of being married to a gearhead, that’s how,” he shot back. “Come on Winry. Dinnertime.”

She went back to his ankle, putting the wires back into place. Oh, so now she was ignoring him? He would just have to bring out the big guns. 

He went back upstairs to get the kids, then lead them back to the workshop downstairs. 

“Mama! Come eat!” Oh boy, did that get a reaction. Winry actually spun around in her chair to face them. The kids all knew that they couldn’t actually go into the workshop, so they stood by the door instead. 

Emma, who Ed was holding so she wouldn’t try to toddle over to her mother, raised her hand before saying, “We worked real hard on dinner! Even Daddy!”

Winry widened her eyes in playful disbelief. “Even Daddy? That’s saying something, since he’s always so lazy.” The kids all giggled, while Ed dramatically gasped and threw a hand over his chest. 

“Excuse you, I slaved on it! I have been working since dawn on dinner!”

She just rolled her eyes. “Oh please, you were still snoring away at dawn.” 

Ed was just about to revisit _that_ particular argument for the umpteenth time, but Lily grabbed onto his hand and started practically swinging around (Ed would have to make sure they played a less energetic game after dinner so they would actually fall asleep). “Yeah, Mama! You gotta come eat dinner with us so we can tell you ‘bout the game we played!”

Winry smiled. “I know sweetie, I’ll be right up. But just let me finish this one puzzle first, okay? Then I’ll come eat dinner.” Ed raised an eyebrow. That was usually his line when he was trying to solve an alchemical theory. She stuck her tongue out at him. 

“But Mama, you gotta eat dinner so you can grow up big and strong,” Lucas said. Ed didn’t bother to hide his laugh, though Winry looked properly chagrined. 

“That’s right kiddo. And I promise, I will eat dinner with all of you. I just need to finish one thing and clean up before I do. Because once we start something, we need to finish it, right?”

“Yes, Mama,” the kids chorused. Ed told them to go upstairs and wash up for dinner before he turned to look at Winry. She had turned back to her workbench, but she was true to her word and was taping wires so they stayed in place while she was gone. Ed didn’t bother to try and help her, as he had made that mistake exactly once in his life and wasn’t eager for a repeat. However, he did start walking towards her and rested his chin on her shoulder.

“You know that it’s my leg, right?”

She smirked. “Yes, Ed, I know that it’s your leg.”

“Then how come you insist on finishing it so fast? I would think that you would keep threatening to make it take longer every time I piss you off.”

“Well, you seem to have learned a lot these past few years of marriage, and your rate of pissing me off is the lowest I’ve ever seen it.” She brushed him off her shoulder and started gathering up spare washers and bits of wiring and placing them back into drawers and on shelves. “Consider this your reward. This is all positive reinforcement.”

He stood up straight and crossed his arms over his chest. “Winry. I’m not fifteen anymore.” She didn’t respond, instead wheeling over to her toolbox to put away screwdrivers and wrenches, so he continued, “You don’t have to rush and pull all-nighters and miss dinner like you used to. I’m right here. I’m not just sticking around while you work on my automail.” She still didn’t respond. “Winry.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” she sighed. “Can you blame me for making it a habit?” She pulled off her gloves and unbuttoned her jumpsuit, pulling her arms out of the sleeves and tying them around her waist. He stared at her for a second, taking in all of her skin that was now on display. He once again thought of how lucky he was to be married to her, before yanking his brain back to the topic at hand.

“No, I really can’t. But I’m trying to get you to make better habits. I know that your work is important to you. It’s important to me too. But I also know that you hate missing out on what the kids are up to, so I’m gonna try and help you miss out on it less.”

She tightened the bandana over her hair, then smiled at him. “Thanks, Ed. I know I can get absorbed in what I’m doing. I sometimes wish I wasn’t like that.”

“Hey, I never wish you were like that!”

She gave him a doubtful look. “Really? You never wish that I didn’t get so holed up down here that I miss dinner and miss my kids and miss you?”

“Not really. Because that would also mean I wish that you weren’t ridiculously good at giving me and the kids attention when we need it. That would also mean I wish that you wouldn’t be the best automail mechanic in Amestris. That would also mean I wish that you hadn’t given me a new arm and leg when we were just kids. That would also mean I wish that you wouldn’t be incredibly dedicated to every customer that you have. And I love all of that. So no. I don’t wish that you could be different.”

Winry looked absolutely flabbergasted. She opened her mouth, and then closed it, then opened it again, but nothing came out. He smirked at her. “Ah, have I made you speechless?”

She glared at him. “No, I just couldn’t think of what to say!”

“Pretty sure that’s the definition of speechless, Win.”

“Oh, shut up!”

She was done with tidying up, so she walked up to him, potentially about to punch him in the stomach, but he reached out to her first. He ran his knuckles from her temple to her cheek, then down to her jaw and neck. She leaned into his touch and closed her eyes. He ran his hand from her shoulder down her arm, before grabbing her hand and holding it. 

“I love everything about you, Winry. There are things that annoy me and things that excite me and things that make me feel incredibly sappy.” He could tell by her expression that she was thinking something along the lines of _you mean like right now?_ But he couldn’t be bothered. “But it doesn’t matter because I love them all. So please don’t ever change, okay?” He lifted her hand up to his face, and pressed a kiss to her fingers. 

She pressed her free hand to his cheek, and he leaned into it. She tilted his head down to kiss him sweetly. “Okay. I won’t.”

Hand in hand, they walked out the workshop door, closing it and turning off the lights. As they walked down the hall, Ed threw his arm over his wife’s shoulder and pulled her close. They listened to their children upstairs and smiled at each other. Ed must have been in some sort of mood, because he just couldn’t get over how much he loved her and how lucky he was.

For a split second, he remembered how much the two of them had been through together. He simply couldn’t think of a time when she had not been in his life. He remembered the day that he decided he was going to marry her when they grew up. He remembered how she gave him a new arm and a leg. 

He remembered being stuck in a mineshaft, impaled on a beam, when his only motivation was that he couldn’t make her cry again. He remembered when the nationwide transmutation circle was activated, and all he could think about was how she was gone. He remembered when the reverse transmutation circle activated, and being so relieved she was alive he could barely breathe. He remembered coming home to her, and finally seeing her cry tears of joy for once. 

All those moments, all of those memories made him realize that there was no way he would be alive today without her. He believed in destiny and fate about as much as he believed in God, but maybe he and Winry really were meant to be together. 

“Mama, Daddy, come on! The food’s gonna get cold!” Lucas stood at the top of the stairs with his hands on his hips, commanding his parents to get a move on. Winry grinned at Ed and squeezed his hand, before bounding up the stairs to their son. Ed blinked a few times, then went to join them. 

_Then again, maybe I am just a sap._


End file.
